Carol’s Column

Politically correct language

A few years ago, a friend, Newton Kanhema, told me a joke. Newton, known for his irreverence about most things, always enjoyed his own jokes. Before he began speaking, his smile, always wide, became wider.

"Hey, Carol," said Newton. "Do you know why we blacks always have sex on our mind?"

"No, Newt," I said. "Why do blacks always have sex on their minds?"

"Because we grow our pubic hair upon our head," replied Newton and laughed loudly.

Humour won over shock and I laughed loudly too. And thought yeah, okay, we're getting there because when we can laugh at ourselves, it's a healthy sign.

Of course the usual white/black South African angst flitted through my mind. Had a white person told me, another white, that particular joke, it would have been racist. But because it had been Newton, black Newton, telling the joke to white Carol, it was just damn funny

Phew. Such is the self-conscious politically correct baggage that is still present as we finish this century and stride into the next. But fortunately it's diminishing rapidly and most people are normalising out of the state of hypersensitivity.

Humour is like a desert flower. It blooms under the most arid and adverse circumstances with a brilliance that shines through. A glimpse at our South African humour reveals a richness of intellectual creativity without doubt stimulated by the oppressive regimes of the past. For humour, of course, becomes an inimitable weapon in the hands of those who can use it well - skillful writers, artists, poets, comedians and cartoonists.

One of the richest stables of literary irony was Drum magazine which produced writers of the calibre of Nat Nakasa, Can Themba, Es'kia (then Zeke) Mphahlele, Arthur Maimane, Bloke Modisane and Henry Nxumalo. Read their writing of the 50's and you'll be thrust into the turbulent and schizophrenic South Africa of that time. When the great racial divide dictated who did what to whom where.

But humourists fought back.

One sentence of Can Themba's essay on 'How to pass the time cheaply' illustrates the point. "At the end of the scale in South Africa you have people with nothing much to do – you have on the one hand the unemployed, mostly black, all very poor and many who can hardly even afford to starve."

This is irony at its best. His colleagues wrote equally well and enterprising publishers have in recent years, published a lot of the work, which because of apartheid, most whites were unaware.

Then there is belly-ache laugh humour. The kind that makes you chortle out aloud. Such as Pieter Dirk Uys in full spate, James Clarke, Gus Silber and Arthur Goldstuck.

Our country's most brilliant satirist, Uys is wickedly irreverent on stage, TV or in print. Either as Uys in person or as alter ego Evita Buizendenhout, he knocks every sacred cow and bull imaginable for nobody can "praat cactus" in quite the same way.

Our maturing baby boomer generation grew up to the strains of Jeremy Taylor's "Ag Pleez Daddy" and in the 60's too, another theatrical satirist, Adam Leslie used wit to emphasise the ridiculous and iniquitous evils of apartheid.

A glance at any newspaper gives readers a feast of wit with columnists Peter Wilhelm, Darrel Bristow-Bovey, Doc Bikitsha, Robert Kirby, Sandile Dikeni, Ken Owen or Arnie Benjamin. And in the visual field that our talent comes to the fore.

Our cartoonists and, indeed their cartoons, are legendary. Take the Sowetan's cartoonist Lennie Sak's character Jojo who wormed his way into South African hearts in a similar fashion to Charlie Brown of peanuts fame. And for biting political comment and excellence of artistic execution, few can beat The Star's own Dov Fedler.

Thank heavens for those who, over the years made us laugh. Such formidable talents as Abe Berry, Bob Connolly, Richard Smith, Derek Bauer, Andy, LH Jackson and F Esterhuyse.

In 1992, Harry Dugmore, Stephen Francis and Rico Schacherl created Madam & Eve, the daily ubiquitous political cartoon strip which now appears at home and abroad. These days, Madam and Eve solve the problems of the world not only in English but in Danish, French too. Produced as well in book form, enthusiasts can purchase entire collections and one of the funniest cartoons of all has to be the title one on the cover of the book 'Madams are from Mars – Maids are from Venus'. Madam and her grandmother are on Mars comfortably ensconced in their space suits reading and sipping gin and tonics. Beside them in a space suit is Eve, vacuuming away Mars rocks.

Equally well known is political cartoonist Zapiro , whose cartoons are an insightful commentary on life in South Africa.

Powerful, effective, cynical, ironical, often acerbic and sometimes bitingly vicious, our humour is part of our culture. It completes us, makes us whole.

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